Wikipedia:Today's featured article/September 30, 2017

Washington v. Texas (1967) is a US Supreme Court case about the right of criminal defendants to have witnesses testify on their behalf. The Court decided that the Compulsory Process Clause of the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution applied in state courts as well as federal courts. At his trial Jackie Washington had attempted to call his co-defendant as a witness but was blocked because state law prevented co-defendants from testifying for each other, under the theory that they might lie for each other on the stand. The Supreme Court reasoned that the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment gives defendants the right to fair proceedings, including the right to compel defense witnesses to testify. In previous cases, the Supreme Court had ruled that the Fourteenth Amendment, which was adopted after the Civil War, makes many federal guarantees in the Bill of Rights applicable to the states. The impact of Washington was narrowed by a later case, Taylor v. Illinois (1988), in which the Court said that "countervailing public interests" could be balanced against a defendant's right to present witnesses.